


Coin to Travel Twice

by entanglednow



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-09
Updated: 2011-08-09
Packaged: 2017-10-23 07:08:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/247576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/entanglednow/pseuds/entanglednow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I don't think I've ever seen anyone pretending to be dead with such <i>relish</i> before."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coin to Travel Twice

The sound of hysterical crying is gradually fading away. Before it's cut off entirely by the sound of a door shutting, somewhere in the distance.

Sherlock immediately stops pretending to be dead, and sits up on the metal table, white sheet fluttering untidily into his lap.

John hasn't thought of a way to phrase how completely and totally unnecessary that was yet. He's sure there are special adjectives for it, if he could just find them. He settles instead for glaring at Sherlock, under the angry hum of the fluorescent lights. He has no idea what on earth possessed him to go along with it. What _always_ possesses him to let Sherlock run with his insane ideas. Even when they're brilliant. Which he's learning is not an excuse.

"You enjoyed that, didn't you?" he says at last. Though it's a rhetorical question, really, because Sherlock's still grinning like a lunatic, with the sort of unbearable smugness that only ever seems to come from someone else's misfortune. Or his own brilliance. It's depressing how often those two go together.

Sherlock claps his hands, and the sound is unnaturally loud in the morgue.

"It proves beyond a doubt that she's innocent."

"Though she's now traumatised, thanks to you," John says, through a frown that's as disapproving as he can make it.

"But innocent." Sherlock seems to think that's the important part.

"I don't think I've ever seen anyone pretending to be dead with such _relish_ before."

"I could hardly give a sub-standard performance, under the circumstances," Sherlock says, though he's still smiling. John gets the oddest feeling this isn't the first time he's pretended to be dead, and it very probably won't be the last.

Sherlock pulls his legs up, and spins sideways on the table, legs dangling off the edge. Then he slips off, bare feet almost soundless on the floor. He gathers the sheet behind him, with a careless sort of inattention before immediately being distracted by something else. He's like a human magpie. John's forced to follow him, if only to stop his sheet getting caught under one of the wheeled tables. A sheet which Sherlock is holding shut at the back only by the very loosest of definitions, leaving John in no doubt whatsoever as to whether he was wearing anything underneath or not. John can't help the fact that he's looking, that he can't seem to _stop_ looking. There's so much skin from the back, every inch of it pale and slender, in a way that just seems overly _naked_. Juts of vertebrae, and the sharp curves of shoulder blade and rib, more obvious when Sherlock twists or leans. The curve of less pedestrian body parts are visible past the fold of cloth, and the long tangle of Sherlock's fingers. All but paraded in front of him, while Sherlock swans about the morgue like he's shopping for new supplies, long white train whispering across the floor behind him. John feels guilty about just how much he's noticing.

"Aren't you going to get dressed, it's freezing in here?" he says, perhaps a little too hurriedly.

Sherlock waves his free hand. "I stopped noticing after a few minutes on the table."

Of course he did, his magnificent brain probably keeps him warm after all.

"Still, you're naked."

Sherlock turns around, and gives him a puzzled look. He seems to think the sheet is fine. The sheet is _not_ fine. Certainly not the way Sherlock is wearing it - not wearing it. John thinks about turning around, and letting Sherlock deduce things from the tense line of his back, but that really wouldn't help anything. Sherlock doesn't seem to be interested in deducing anything anyway though, distracted by the instruments set on the shiny surface of the table. Sometimes John doesn't even need to be able to read him, he's developing a worrying ability to just know whenever Sherlock is going to do something socially unacceptable.

"No, you're not stealing equipment from the morgue."

"I don't have one of these," Sherlock says, long fingers lifting the stainless steel weight of something that John's too far away to identify properly. It's amazing how the words 'stealing is wrong,' remain one of those rules Sherlock doesn't believe in applying to his own life.

"And if you take it neither will they," John argues.

"My need supersedes theirs," Sherlock says with a haughty look, which John had previously thought only spinster aunts could pull off - and even then only in classic literature. It's amazing how Sherlock can be almost supernaturally distracting one minute, and completely ridiculous the next. It's like watching an alien try to be human. Which makes his own fascination worrying in several ways. But that's the thing about fascination, it's almost impossible to command yourself to stop doing it.

"No, it doesn’t. You just think it does because you have an overdeveloped sense of self-importance."

"I have a healthy sense of self-importance." Sherlock's smile in profile looks both smug and lascivious.

John's entire life is unfair. He settles for an irritated tone of voice, because it's a comfortable, familiar emotion that isn't distracted by nudity.

"This explains the whole solar system thing, doesn’t it? Because if it's not revolving around you, it's just not important." John wrangles the instrument away from him, and sets it back down. Fully aware that the moment his back is turned Sherlock will manage to secrete the damn thing under his sheet somewhere. That shouldn't even be possible. You shouldn't be able to study smuggling as an art form.

"Hmm," Sherlock agrees, momentarily losing his grip on one half of the sheet when it gets tangled round a counter leg. John is briefly - very briefly - tempted to step on the damn thing. It's only the certainty that that will most definitely make everything worse that stops him.

"You're not listening - I wish you wouldn't tune me out completely, just because you think I'm not contributing anything important to the universe at large."

"You weren't." There's a lilt to the comment which suggests Sherlock is teasing him. But John's in no mood to be teased. He's also in no mood to have an argument while Sherlock's wearing a sheet. He just _can't_.

"Sherlock, _get dressed_."

"In a second I just - "

"Please." John's exasperation is warring audibly with his desperation, and at this point he doesn’t even care whether that's suggestive, or incriminating. Or some other complicated thing that gets him in trouble. Because trying to police his own brain when he's around Sherlock is, most likely, the fastest way to send him completely round the bend.

The expression Sherlock turns on him is focused, and silent, and ever so slightly terrifying in a way John can't quite name.

"Oh," Sherlock says after a moment, like he's discovered something unusual, somewhere he didn't expect it.

John glares at him.

The sheet drops in large white folds, ends up piled over, and between Sherlock's bare feet. Brighter than the tiles around it, and Sherlock is exactly the sort of naked that John has been carefully avoiding thinking about since he sat up on the table. His body is narrow and artistic, every line of him slim but masculine. He seems almost aggressively unconcerned with his own nudity, which just makes it worse somehow. There's nothing overtly sexual about the pose, but John's brain doesn't seem to care. He's never wanted to reach out and touch something so much in his life

"Sherlock." He misses exasperated by a mile.

Sherlock's _'hmm'_ is entirely too calculating for his liking. Though John still doesn’t stop him - doesn't even put up a fight - when Sherlock lifts John's hands and lays them on his own bare waist. It's such a careless, unsubtle gesture of intimacy, that he can't breathe for a second.

"Was that what you wanted?" Sherlock says smoothly.

"Bastard," John manages through his teeth, while his hands grasp, and then tighten where they lay. He steps in close without waiting for permission, and Sherlock really isn't cold at all. Even though he should be, even though he's been laying on those damned metal tables, and he should be ice cold. It's like he's not content with breaking the laws of society, he has to break the laws of physics too. Something - something metal and probably expensive - crashes loudly to the floor when John pushes Sherlock back against the table, back bowing slightly when it reaches the cold metal. Though Sherlock doesn’t complain, instead there's a soft but audible exhale, amusement and satisfaction, like John has impressed him. It's the sort of noise that would normally make him happy. But all John can do is call him a bastard again, just before he kisses him.

He really isn't sure whether that's what he wants, or even what Sherlock wants, until he does it. Experimentation really is the only way to be certain, it seems. Because, yes, it turns out that he does, very much want this. Also, Sherlock is irritatingly tall, and the metal behind them really is very cold against his knuckles. He derives a strange, sort of satisfaction about pressing Sherlock back into it, while he wrecks his messy curls and mutters unhappy, uncomplimentary things against Sherlock's mostly unresisting mouth.

He's fairly sure there's a laugh in there somewhere. Before there are long hands fisted in his coat, and a sudden and satisfying amount of participation from the both of them. If this is the only time John's ever going to do this then he's going to make it count, damn it. This is moment of madness he will regret because it was monumentally _stupid_ , and not because he didn't take advantage of it.

If someone had told him a week ago that he'd be kissing Sherlock Holmes in a morgue -

...

John probably wouldn't have been that surprised, if he's brutally honest with himself.

It's far too easy to slide a leg between Sherlock's bare thighs, push in and up, and the reward is a catch of breath and an open mouth. Everything is in danger of sliding away from him. Hands slipping down to hold Sherlock's narrow hips, thumbs testing the hard juts of his hip bones. Pressing into him hard enough to feel the angles of his body through his clothes, not quite warm, not familiar, not yet. He's human enough to react to him though, which shouldn't be so surprising, shouldn't make John's fingers press tight into Sherlock's skin. So tempted to stray in, to find the weight of him and see if he can rattle Sherlock's composure.

Slippery slopes.

John breaks away, if only so he could say that he did. Though he nearly ruins his resolve straight away, because Sherlock's throat is impossibly long, and when he swallows it flexes in a way that John had never thought of as erotic before.

Sherlock's tiny noise of amusement suggests he's reading John's mind again.

"I'm fairly sure you don't want Dr. Johansson to return from lunch to find us doing something which will be very hard to explain away as 'police business,'" Sherlock says smoothly.

John's tempted to call Sherlock's bluff - but his life is complicated enough without adding 'caught fucking in a morgue' to the list of things he regrets. But his mouth tastes like Sherlock, and that's pretty, bloody distracting.

"Put the sheet back on, before you destroy what little sense I have left," John says shakily. While wondering if he actually does have any sense left.

"We're going to talk about this later." Sherlock sounds far too sensible. John was hoping he could at least shake a little of the sensible out of him. Before wondering if that's even possible.

"No, _we aren't_ ," John says firmly, as if saying 'no' to Sherlock is just that easy. He may be delusional now.

"We're definitely talking about this later. This is _interesting_."

John thinks he should be flattered, but there's no more space in his brain for other emotions right now - perhaps later.


End file.
